The Eve of Destruction

How 1965 Transformed America

Of all the changes that have swept across America in the past century, perhaps none have been as swift or dramatic as those that transpired in the 1960s. The United States entered the decade still flush with postwar triumphalism, but left it profoundly changed: shaken by a disastrous foreign war and unhinged by domestic social revolutions and countercultural movements that would define the nation's character, politics, and policies for decades to come. The prevailing understanding of the 1960s traces its powerful shockwaves to 1968, a year of violent protests and tragic assassinations.